1. Lack of granular privacy / profile control

   • “The lack of privacy controls … our profiles are public, and all our posts and comments are visible to anyone.” (lemmy.toot.pt)
   • Users cannot choose who sees their profile history, comments, or posts.

2. Poor content discovery / lack of niche communities / limited diversity

   • “The platform lacks all the communities … There are no communities for games or music or sports or hobbies or movies or anything.” (Reddit)
   • “Not nearly enough people to cover all the niche interest communities that Reddit does.” (szmer.info)

3. Fragmentation across instances / duplication of communities

   • “Multiple communities dedicated to the same thing across multiple instances … causes confusion …” (Popcar’s Blog)
   • “There are duplicate communities: every instance seems to have their own version of each community.” (Reddit)

4. Bad User Experience (UX) / usability issues

   • “Lemmy is losing so many potential new users because the UX sucks for the vast majority of people.” (NodeBB Community)
   • “Simply using them is confusing … accessing remote subs is a complete train wreck.” (Reddit)

5. Performance / reliability / scaling problems

   • “Slow and unreliable” is listed among cons. (Slant)
   • “Servers go down … syncing/federation issues.” (Android Authority)

6. Moderation, safety tools, and content-quality issues

   • “Moderation tooling is not adequate for removing illegal content from servers.” (We Distribute)
   • Users report low content quality (memes, shitposts, agenda memes) instead of high-value discussions: > “The politics is always … or it’s toxic American hyper-partisan … The memes aren’t any better.” (Reddit)

7. Search and archive weak/incomplete

   • “Search sucks … Lemmy isn’t.” (szmer.info)
   • Lack of long-tail content archive.

8. Over-representation of particular content types (US-news, memes, agenda posts) and low content-quality

   • Users note: heavy US-centric news, lots of meme posts, little local news/events or regional content.
   • While I didn’t find direct sources for exactly “too much US news / no local events”, the broader complaint of “lack of niche interest/hobby/sports” covers this. (Reddit)

It’s not really the previously banned users that are the problem. It’s that the real heart and soul of Lemmy is c/2real4meirl or whatever - ie, depression memes.

Reddit initially became popular because it was fun and interesting. Lemmy has picked up some of the old reddit crowd by being a bit more tech focused - but for the most point the links and comments posted are doom and gloom. Either AI is taking all our jobs, or its a huge scam. The world is run by evil capitalists who personally want you, in particular, to have a meaningless and miserable life. But don’t worry, because we, the proletariat, will overthrow them in a violent revolution… just as soon as we stop doom scrolling and crying in bed - haha, amiright guys?

Nothing about this is fun or interesting. It is bitter, angering, and depressing. That is what drives people away.

https://lemmy.world/comment/20046325

When you quote a block of text only the first paragraph gets quoted.